% Why you should boycott Harry Potter and any other work by J.K. Rowling
% Leah Rowe
% 2018-09-07

And also a short rant about why Richard Stallman is God.

As I was conversing with a friend on IRC, the subject of Harry Potter came up.
I proceeded to rant passionately about why I hate J.K. Rowling.

I then decided to put it on my blog. Because why not?

There's no point in reinventing the wheel, so here are some articles on the
subject by doctor Richard Stallman, the wizard who founded the
[GNU project](https://www.gnu.org/),
[Free Software Foundation](https://www.fsf.org/) and a man for whom I
have the utmost respect. He is one of my heroes, and I've met him in person
three times. There was a time when I had a *falling out* with him
(to put it lightly) during a 6 month period of pure insanity on my part. I won't
cover that here, it's history now... but I digress. Richard Stallman is cool.
I disagree with some of his political views, since he isn't a communist (as far
as I can tell from his writings, he is a social democrat, or liberal. He
supports capitalism).

He is a man of upstanding character, however. He has fought rigorously for what
he believes in for decades, and he is consistent. He doesn't lie. He says it
how it is (as he sees it) and means what he says. He is extremely stubborn, and
he is... just really really cool.

And he's still going. He's a cranky old man now, and still travelling all over
the world lecturing people about Free Software. I'm a believer in Free Software
myself. The reason I use GNU+Linux and Libreboot (and also founded the Libreboot)
project was out of respect for his philosophy, which I stumbled upon when I was
13 (I'm 26 now. I've used GNU+Linux for over a decade at this point).

Just read about him on wikipedia if you're interested:\
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman>\
And read his blog:\
<https://stallman.org/>

Anyway, he wrote some excellent articles warning people not to buy Harry Potter books:

- <https://stallman.org/harry-potter.html>
- <https://stallman.org/harry2.html>
- <https://stallman.org/why-harry-harry.html>

I will now add my own further reasons why Harry Potter sucks:

- J.K. Rowling is extremely rightwing. I would argue that she is fascist.
- The world depicted in the Harry Potter books is extremely fascist. There is
  a lot of poverty and despair. Lots of homeless people. Lots of elitism.
- The Harry Potter books are *extremely racist*, as are the movies (how many
  black people do you see in the movies? I bet you can count them on one hand).
- The Harry Potter books are extremely sexist (almost no women in senior
  positions of society. And yes, internalized sexism is a thing... J.K. Rowling
  is anything but a feminist). - I'm a feminist, so I notice these things.
- Voldemort is cool. And the book completely assassinates his character.
  What I see in voldemort is someone who doesn't follow the status quo, who is
  fighting against a corrupt political system.
  It's possible that he could be left-wing, although his exact political
  intentions are unclear from the book (but he is opposing the status quo,
  rather than being part of it, so the possibility does exist). He is
  outcast from society though, and the book depicts him as *the bad guy*. In
  books like Harry Potter, the protagonist is depicted as good and their
  character is never questioned.
- Harry Potter is a total asshole, especially in the books. He's a cocky piece
  of shit and I'm glad Voldemort killed his parents.
- Did I mention that the Harry Potter world is extremely capitalist? And I mean
  really capitalist. There are almost no public services, everything costs
  money. Education is privatized (Hogwarts is a private academy).

Fuck Harry Potter. And fuck J.K. Rowling.

That is all.
